Suggestions for authoring with both Dolby and PCM soundtracks

[StevenHaefner]

Hi, this is my first post and I think asking my specific questions here will help save me time from constant googling. My band played a gig a few days back and I volunteered to make DVD's from footage captured on a Sony DCR-TRV240 Digital 8 camera. There was a second camera there also, so I may insert some of that footage here and there but the Sony footage will be the basis of this project.

I did a capture utilizing the S-video output on the cam, though my sisters Roxio video capture USB device and into my computer (a Compaq Presario CQ60, 32 bit with further details below) for the video and ran the audio from the cams component a/v out to my computers audio line in. I captured using the latest release of virtualdub (I do wish to use only open source software for this project as much as possible but I am open to buying a nicer (than my sisters roxio) external a/v I/O usb device or external usb card because I got tons of vhs tapes I'd like to digitize (but i don't have firewire unfortunately, perhaps some day)).

I used huffyuv (2.1.1) as the video codec (configured YUY2 'predict gradient' and RGB 'convert to YUY2') and captured the audio raw pcm 48,000/16. I ended up with nice big .avi files (around 30 GB each for the two one hour sets). But while mostly in (audio/video) sync 99% of the time, there are anomalies here and there that aren't present when I monitored the cam on a CRT screen making a vhs safety copy.

These anomalies are little one or two second events where the action speeds up or down unnaturally, and sometimes they get worse on a second viewing and sometimes they disappear and play back normally other times. (I assume this is just my relatively cheap computer struggling with such large files, they in fact only play well in Windows Media Player, VLC and MPlayer stutter the playback and Quicktime doesn't even recognize the codecs lol).

I did tell vitualdub to drop and add frames as necessary for frames too close or far apart (null frame burst limit 10), I set the re-sync mode to not re-sync between the audio and video streams, set the audio latency determination to fixed (0 ms) and everything else in the capture timing box is unchecked.

OK, now to authoring, is there any open source software that allows for multi-sound track audio that includes a PCM and Dolby Digital stream? (and of course the video will be compressed to MPEG-2). I assume that such a software would also allow for a set audio button/menu along with the usual play all button and chapter menus. I also assume I will use dual-layer discs for the burning, perhaps even a disc a set, however I could also use dvdshrink to take care of that as well.

Otherwise I'll just go ahead and author it using dvdstyler. (But I'm a nut for lossless audio and have been for over a decade now, ever since the heyday of napster back in 2000-2001 when I would download mp3's, listen to them and say to myself "these sound like @#!%", even the 320 bps ones have reduced stereo imaging and frequency response that I really can notice).

Thanks for any help that will come this posting and I'm sure others will appreciate it as well. It's also gotten late for me so I shall wait till tomorrow to check for responses.

Steven

Vista Home Premium, AMD Athlon Dual-Core QL-62, 2000 Mhz, 2 GB RAM, 222 GB internal and 1.82 TB external (usb) HDDs

[StevenHaefner]

OK, upon further experimenting, I saw that my HDD captures were perfectly fine when I compressed the large huffyuv/pcm files down to MPEG-2/AC3 in Avidemux.

I still would like to know what authoring software will allow a dual soundtrack. Thank you.

[aedipuss]

dvdlab pro

[StevenHaefner]

Awesome, thanks aedipuss! However that is not open source as I was hoping for, however it does have a trial period so I may give it a shot just for this project.

[StevenHaefner]

Oh, and I spoke too soon, some speed up slow down anomalies showed up in the compressed down to MPEG-2/AC3 files!

[SLK001]

OK, upon further experimenting, I saw that my HDD captures were perfectly fine when I compressed the large huffyuv/pcm files down to MPEG-2/AC3 in Avidemux.

Well, your experiment has shown that you really don't have superman ears, so why do you still want the lossless PCM track? An .AC3 compressed audio file at quality bit rates (224kbps and above) are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from a PCM track to the human ear - especially one that has been playing in a band. A PCM audio track will consume ~700MB per hour, so your two hours will eat up ~1.4GB of precious disc space.

You would be better off using an AC3 audio track compressed at 384kbps, which will give you an audio file of ~346MB for the entire two hours, leaving you with plenty of room for your video on a single layer disc (a concert should compress nicely, since there aren't many action scenes). Even a 448kbps two hour audio file would only consume 403MB.

I suspect that the sync issues you are having is only due to computer overtaxing. Once compiled into a DVD video format, everything should play okay (but you'll have to test this).

[StevenHaefner]

I can too tell the difference between the original CD and MP3@320 bps doing side by side comparison. Maybe AC3@224 and above is better than MP3@320. Anyway. I still want what i want if at all possible. the experiments were for the video portions only. Thanks anyway for responding!

[manono]

I can too tell the difference between the original CD and MP3@320 bps doing side by side comparison. Maybe AC3@224 and above is better than MP3@320. Anyway. I still want what i want if at all possible. the experiments were for the video portions only. Thanks anyway for responding!

I agree with SLK001. But for an additional reason as well. He mentioned the space PCM takes up. This is even more important if you're trying to cram the whole 2 hours into a single DVD5. Are you, or will you be going to dual layer? In addition, you'll have to lower the max video bitrate by over 1500 (the bitrate of that additional PCM track), which can severely affect the resulting video quality, especially for crappy home video caps. No offense intended, but it won't compare to professionally made movie studio quality video. By trying to go for that last extra 10% better audio, you're condemning the video to being of substandard quality.

Having said all that, any decent authoring program allows for both PCM and AC3 audio. If yours doesn't, use a different one. If you want free, try DVDAuthorGUI or GUI4DVDAuthor.

[StevenHaefner]

no,no i'm willing to use up to 2 dual layer dvds at least for my personal copies, i may give the the other guys a single dual layer each, i just wish i had BD capability then id just use Dolby HD audio or something

[StevenHaefner]

oh and thanks for the two authoring links at the bottom of your post manono

[manono]

You're welcome. I use DVDAuthorGUI quite a lot myself.

I couldn't quite tell from what you said, but as near as I can determine from reading the manual, DVDStyler allows for the use of both PCM and DD audio. If you're already comfortable with authoring using that program, you can continue to use it.

[StevenHaefner]

dvdstyler is looking just a couple steps above my sisters roxio ez vcr2dvd, as far as i can tell it only has equal length chapters, but then again it was only a very ill-rehearsed debut on a sunday afternoon at a very small town bar. I know i'm trying to bite off more than i can chew since this is my first dvd authoring project, i used to do very simple vcd burns in the past.

But now i can buy 2 TB USB HDDs for around 100 dollars, I'll just keep on buying HDDs to hold everything but i don't want to trust any cloud storage stuff.

But i always find a way to do what is needed if not what is wanted. I can make soundtrack cds from the wav's. And ill probably enjoy watching the vhs safety copy just 'cause i like being old school analog, i still got hundreds of LP records AND a turntable to play em on lol

[manono]

dvdstyler is looking just a couple steps above my sisters roxio ez vcr2dvd, as far as i can tell it only has equal length chapters,

That's not true. You can create chapters just about any place you like, either by extracting the chapters from the DVD and then modifying them a bit to fit DVDStyler's format, or by using the video itself to choose chapter points. Perhaps a run through the manual might help:

http://www.dvdstyler.org/docs/dvd_styler_guide.pdf

[StevenHaefner]

Cool thx, yeah i thought i'd look up chapters in the user file as well. I just did a third recapture, to try to reduce any more anomalies by making sure my browser and anything else was off, set my my screen saver to 75 minutes, and saved the file to my external, which i read something about here not wanting to use the OS's HDD if you can. And i started and stopped the captures more exactly where i would have ended up using an editor on, saving that step. So now i just go ahead run dvdstyler and plug in the avi's and get out mpg's with a little graphics design on the menu frames thing happening. Piece of cake.